FROM STAMBOUL TO TABRIZ.[[1]]
Politics, since the year 1848, have engrossed so unwonted a share of the attention of the reading world, that there can be no doubt that, in more than one European country, books of great literary and scientific interest have been withheld from publication until more tranquil days should give them a better chance of the welcome they merit. Such has avowedly been the case with Dr Wagner’s latest work, the fourth and most important of a series suggested to him by several years of Oriental travel and study. It was, if we rightly remember, in the second book of this series, relating to Armenia,[[2]] that he announced his intention of reserving for a final work the more important results of his rambles and observations. Previously to the Armenian volume he had published his account of Caucasus and the Cossacks,[[3]] to the general reader more interesting than any of its successors. Third in order of appearance came the Journey to Colchis;[[4]] and now, believing that his countrymen’s taste for books of foreign travel and adventure is reviving, he puts forth two copious volumes, containing all that he has to say, and that he has not previously published, concerning his Eastern journeyings and residence.
Dr Wagner is one of the most experienced, indefatigable, and, as we believe, one of the most trustworthy and impartial of foreign literary travellers. On a former occasion we explained how his strong natural bent for travel and scientific research had overcome many and great obstacles, and had conducted him not only through various European countries, but with a French army to Constantina, and afterwards over a great part of Western Asia. His present book is comprehensive and somewhat desultory in its character. It details the author’s residence in the Alpine region of Turkish Armenia, his travels in Persia, and his adventurous visits to certain independent tribes of Kourds, whose country is immediately adjacent to that interesting but unsafe district of Kourdistan, where Schulze, the German antiquarian, and the Englishman Browne (the discoverer of Darfour) met a bloody death, and rest in solitary graves. Dr Wagner is sanguine that, now that the revolutionary fever has abated, many will gladly quit the study of newspapers, and the contemplation of Europe’s misty future, to follow him into distant lands, rarely trodden by European foot, and some of which have hitherto been undescribed “by any German who has actually visited them.” As the most novel portions of his book, he indicates his visits to the mountain district south of Erzroum, and his excursions east, south, and west of the great salt lake of Urumiah, the Dead Sea of Persia. A keen politician, and this book being, as we have already observed, a sort of omnium-gatherum of his Eastern experiences, political, scientific, and miscellaneous, he devotes his first chapter to what he terms “a dispassionate appreciation of Prince Metternich’s Oriental policy,” (chiefly with respect to Servia,) which chapter we shall avail ourselves of his prefatory permission to pass unnoticed, as irrelevant to the main subject of the book. Equally foreign to the objects announced in the title-page are the contents of Chapter the Second, in which, before taking ship for Trebizond, he gives a hundred pages to the Turkish capital, promising, notwithstanding all that has of late years been written concerning it, to tell us something new about Constantinople, and bidding his readers not to fear that he is about to impose upon them a compilation from the innumerable printed accounts of that city, which have issued from female as well as male pens, “from the days of Lady Montague down to Mrs Ida Pfeiffer the far-travelled, and Madame Ida Hahn Hahn the devotee.” He fulfils his promise. His sketches from the Bosphorus are not only amusingly written, but novel and original. Dr Wagner, it must be observed, set out upon his Eastern wanderings well provided with circular letters of recommendation from Lord Aberdeen and M. Guizot to the various British and French agents in the countries he anticipated visiting. From the Russian government he also obtained, although with greater difficulty, similar documents. The natural consequence was, that, at Constantinople, and elsewhere, he passed much of his time in diplomatic and consular circles, and to such intercourse was doubtless indebted for much useful information, as his readers unquestionably are for many pungent anecdotes and entertaining reminiscences.
Upon an early day of his stay in Constantinople, Dr Wagner was so fortunate as to enjoy a near and leisurely view of his Highness Abdul Meschid. It was a Friday, upon which day the Grand Seignior is wont to perform his devotions in one of the principal mosques of his capital. In the court of the great Achmet mosque, Dr Wagner saw a crowd assembled round a group of twenty horses, amongst which was a slender, richly-caparisoned, silver-grey Arabian, of extraordinary beauty and gentleness. It was a favourite steed of the Sultan’s. Presently the door of the mosque opened; the grey was led close up to the lowest step; a slender Turk came forth, descended the steps stiffly and rather unsteadily, was assisted into saddle and stirrup by black slaves, and rode silently away through the silent crowd, which gave back respectfully as he passed, whilst every head was bowed and every hand placed upon the left breast. No shout or cheer was heard—Turkish custom forbidding such demonstrations—nor did the sovereign requite by salute or smile his subjects’ mute reverence. At that time Abdul Meschid was but twenty years old. His appearance was that of a sickly man of thirty. Early excesses had prematurely aged him. His cheeks were sunken; lines, rarely seen in youth, were visible at the corners of his eyes and mouth; his gaze was fixed and glassy. Dr Wagner is witty at the expense of another German writer,[[5]] who saw the Sultan since he did, and sketched his personal appearance far more favourably.
“It is possible, however,” he says, “that with improved health the Sultan’s figure may have improved and his countenance have acquired nobility, so as to justify the description of the genial author of the ‘Fragments.’ Possible is it that Dr Spitzer’s[[6]] steel pills, combined with the seraglio-cook’s strong chicken broth and baths of Burgundy wine, may have wrought this physical marvel, have given new vigour to the muscles, have braced the nerves, and have imparted to his Highness’s drooping cheeks that firm and healthful look which the learned German declares he noted on the occasion of his audience. Abdul Meschid has still youth on his side; and when such is the case, nature often willingly aids the physician’s inadequate art. At the time I speak of, it is quite certain that the young Sultan looked like a candidate for the hospital. His aspect excited compassion, and corresponded with the description given to us of him by the German sculptor Streichenberg, who certainly contemplated his Highness more closely and minutely than the ‘Fragment’ writer, seeing that his business was to carve the Padisha’s likeness in ivory. As an artist, Mr Streichenberg was not particularly edified by the lean frame and flabby countenance of so young a prince. Not to displease his sublime patron, he was compelled to follow the example of that other German sculptor, who, commissioned by his royal Mæcenas to model his hand and leg for a celebrated dancer, adopted, instead of the meagre reality, the graceful ideal of the Belvidere Apollo, and so earned both praise and guerdon. The person of the Grand Seignior appeared to Streichenberg, as it did to me, emaciated, relaxed, narrow-breasted, and faded. Two years later, when I again saw the Sultan, in the solemn procession of the Kur-ban-Beiram, a renegade, who stood beside me, exclaimed, ‘Were I the Sultan, and looked as he looks, I would never show myself in public.’”
Close behind the Sultan rode the chief of the eunuchs, a fat negro from Sudan, mounted upon a horse as black as himself; and behind him came a young Turk of remarkable beauty, whose thick raven-black beard contrasted with the whiteness of his complexion, as did his whole appearance with that of the sickly sovereign, and with the dingy, monkey-like physiognomy of the Kisslar Aga. Beside such foils, no wonder that the picturesque young Oriental, with his profile like that of some Saracen warrior, and his dreamy thoughtful eyes, found favour with the fair. Riza Pasha was his name; he was then the seraglio-favourite, the lover of Valide, the mother of the Sultan. He alone pulled the strings of Turkish politics, and made the lame old Grand Vizier, Rauf Pasha, dance like a puppet to whatever tune he piped.
The Sultan and his suite were attired in the reformed costume—in blue frocks of Polish cut, red trousers, and the red fez, with its abundant blue tassel drooping over it on all sides. Scarcely had they ridden out of sight when a group of very different character and appearance issued from the chief gate of the mosque, gathering on its way far more demonstrations of popularity than did Abdul Meschid and his Kisslar Aga. It was composed of Turkish priests and doctors—Ulemas, with their Mufti at their head—all in the old Turkish garb, with ample turbans and huge beards. The sympathy of the people with these representatives of the old régime was expressed by far lower bows, by more fervent pressure of hand on heart, than had greeted the Sultan’s passage. The holy men looked kindly upon the crowd, amongst whom the Mufti occasionally threw small coins, which naturally augmented his popularity, and secured him many followers and good wishes. Dr Wagner remarks upon the present contradictory and anomalous state of Turkish dress. At the festival of the Kurban-Beiram he saw the Sultan and all the state officials, from the Grand Vizier downwards, in European uniforms—narrow trousers, gold epaulets, tight-buttoned coats, collars stiff with embroidery. But at the collar the Frank ceased, and the Oriental reappeared. There was the long beard, and the brimless fez. With this last item of costume, the boldest Turkish reformer has not as yet dared to interfere. The covering of the forehead with a peak or brim to the cap is an innovation for which the Turks are not yet ripe. It is considered the outward and visible sign of the Giaour, and a Turk who should walk the streets of Constantinople in a hat, or in a cap with a peak, would be stoned by the mob. The prejudice springs from the duty stringently enjoined upon every true believer, to touch the ground with his forehead when praying. Hence, to wear a vizard over the brow appears to the Turk like contempt of a religious law. A bold European in the service of the Porte advised Sultan Mahmoud to put leathern peaks to his soldiers’ caps. On duty they would keep off the sun; at prayer-time the caps might be turned round upon the head. But Mahmoud, passionate reformer though he was, shrank from offering so deadly an affront to Turkish fanaticism. Neither did he dare, like Peter the Great, to crop his subjects’ beards. The well-intended changes which he did introduce were sufficiently startling, and to many of them, even at the present day, the nation is scarcely reconciled. In a picturesque point of view, the new style of dress, intended as the signal of a general change in Turkish usages and institutions, is anything but an improvement upon the old one. The physical prestige of the Oriental departed with his flowing robe, with his shawls and his rich turban.
“These fat-paunched, crooked-legged pashas,” exclaims Dr Wagner, “what caricatures they appear in their buttoned-up uniforms! Formerly, when the folds of their wide garments concealed bodily imperfections, the Turks were held to be a handsome race. Now, in Constantinople, a handsome man, in the reformed dress, is an exception to the rule. The Turks of the towns are rarely slender and well-built; and the tall, muscular figures which one so commonly finds amongst Arabs, Persians, and Tyrolese, are scarcely ever to be seen in Turkey. Neither do we see in Turkish cities anything to remind us of the fine knightly figures of the Circassians—although, from the female side, so much Circassian blood runs in the veins of the higher classes of Turks. The indolent manner of life, the bringing up of boys in the harem until the age of puberty, too early indulgence in tschibouk-smoking and coffee-drinking, and premature excesses of another kind, have all contributed to enervate and degrade an originally vigorous and handsome race.”
In the whole Beiram procession, Dr Wagner declares, there were, besides Riza Pasha, but two handsome men amongst all the Turks of the higher class there present. Of the numerous array of officers and soldiers, it was but here and there that he saw one tolerably well-made, and athletic figures were still more rarely observable. Worse than any looked the debilitated Sultan, cramped in his tight coat, oppressed by his heavy epaulets and gold lace, his diamonds and his plumes, and leaning languidly forward on his fine charger. What a contrast with the portrait of the Emperor Nicholas, which Dr Wagner saw when visiting the summer seraglio of Kadi-Köi! Opposite to a divan upon which Abdul Meschid was wont to repose—whilst his tympanum was agreeably tickled by the harmony of half-a-dozen musical boxes, playing different tunes at the same time—stood two costly porcelain vases, whereon were painted likenesses of the Emperor and Empress of all the Russias. They were presents from Nicholas to the Sultan. “The Emperor’s gigantic and powerful frame and martial countenance were admirably portrayed. The painter had given him a mien and bearing as though he were in the act of commanding his grenadiers. As a contrast, I pictured to myself the Turkish monarch reposing his feeble frame upon the luxurious velvet divan; the harmless ruler who prefers ease in his harem to a gallop at the head of his troops; the trill of his musical boxes, and the flutes of dancing dervishes, to the clatter of cuirasses and the thunder of twelve-pounders.” Russia and Turkey are well typified by their rulers. On the one hand, vigour, energy, and power; on the other, weakness, decrepitude, and decline. What wonder if, as Dr Wagner relates, the young Archduke Constantine, when visiting the city that bears his name, gazed wistfully and hopefully from the lofty gallery of the Galata tower on the splendid panorama spread before him, as though dreaming that, one day, perhaps, the double eagle might replace the crescent upon the stately pinnacles of Stamboul!
After passing in review several of the most remarkable men in Turkey, Reschid Pasha, Omar Pasha the Renegade, Tahir Pasha, the fierce old admiral who commanded the Turkish fleet at Navarino, and who—never well disposed towards Christians—regarded them, from that disastrous day forward, with inextinguishable hatred, Dr Wagner speaks of the representatives at Constantinople of various European courts, briefly retracing some of the insults and cruelties to which, in former times, the ambassadors of Christian sovereigns were subjected by the arrogant Porte, and noting the energy and success with which Great Britain alone, of all the aggrieved powers, and even before the empire of the seas had become indisputably hers, invariably exacted and obtained satisfaction for such injuries. He remarks with admiration upon the signal reparation extorted by Lord Ponsonby in the Churchill case, and proceeds to speak in the highest terms of that diplomatist’s able successor.